Jonah Burridge, the captain of the St. Thomas University men’s volleyball team, has been playing volleyball for almost all of his life.
“My dad was a volleyball coach … so I was in the gym [with him] even when I was like two to three years old, but I’ve played competitive volleyball since Grade Four,” said Burridge.
Burridge grew up in Fort St. John, which he explained is “an old field town” in northeastern British Columbia where volleyball and hockey are the two biggest sports.
“I played triple A hockey growing up, I played school basketball, badminton, soccer—a lot of soccer—pretty much every sport you could think of,” Burridge said.
Before he played for the Tommies, Burridge played volleyball for his club team, school team and the Fort St. John men’s team.
“For a couple years before I came to school when I was working I played for the Fort St. John men’s team which is called the Fort St. John Pounders, and we just played in the BC Super League,” Burridge said.
Burridge decided to come to STU after a friend of his shared the national rankings.
“A guy who I had played volleyball with earlier on in BC had shared the national rankings and STU was on the national rankings and so I looked at it … and wrote the coaches.”
After reflecting for a moment on his time as a student athlete, Burridge said that you need to manage your time really well.
“You really have to make sure that you stay in contact with all your professors … as well as with classmates so that you can catch up with anything you missed.”
Burridge hopes the Tommies will be able to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship this year.
“We have a lot of rookies this year on the volleyball team, but I think we have a lot of talent, and so I’d like us to continue to improve,” said Burridge. “During my years at STU we’ve managed to make it to nationals three times for volleyball.”
Burridge is currently the only fifth year on the Tommies volleyball team.
“I really want as the captain of the volleyball team this year to kind of pass on the winning mentality that we had when we were going to nationals every year.”
